Tuesday, June 02, 2015

The Surprising Reason For Many Trading Failures

Our cognitive, social, and personality strengths are gateways to our emotional well-being and life satisfaction.  When we exercise our strengths, we're most likely to find our work and relationships to be fulfilling.  Unfulfilling situations, very often, are those that frustrate our deepest values and competencies.

Many people pursue trading careers when, in fact, those careers are not well suited to their strengths.  They look for the right trading styles and setups and seek to make changes in their psyches when what they need is work that is aligned with the best of who they are.

If you're not succeeding at trading despite your best efforts, looking at alternatives is not an admission of failure.  It could be the first step toward your success.  If these are some of your strengths, trading may well not be your best career option:

*  People skills and interests
*  Spiritual values and interests
*  Creative skills and interests, especially of an aesthetic nature
*  Mechanical skills and interests
*  Helping skills and interests

Many people need a reasonable degree of career and financial security to function at their best.  Trading rarely offers these.  Many people also perform best in highly social, intellectual, or creative environments.  Many trading settings do not maximize these factors.

Sometimes, what looks like self-sabotaging behavior in trading is simply people acting on unfulfilled needs.  The trader who needs variety and creativity breaks trading rules.  It is his or her strengths--not their weaknesses--that cause them to lose discipline.

Your trading problems may be caused by the best of who you are, not the worst.

No one really talks about that.

Further Reading:  Building Strengths
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